In May of 2009, author and speaker Gordon MacDonald was invited to spend a weekend at the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Mount Zion's pastor, Bishop Joseph Walker, III, had invited MacDonald to preach to his congregation on a day devoted to honoring those who were graduating from one level of education to another. In an article for Leadershipjournal.net, MacDonald shares how the ...

In his book Please Don't Squeeze the Christian, Scott Sernau reflects on the danger of cynicism—especially in the life of believers who claim a "living hope." He writes:

Cynicism kills in the manner of frostbite: the only symptom is a deadening numbness. And even Christians are often tinged with this frostbite. Callousness and doubt numb us to life and joy. We find ourselves leaving the triumphant ...

What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life.

—Emil Brunner, Swiss theologian (1889–1966)

Dangerous Minds is based on a true story about high school teacher LouAnne Johnson (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) making a difference in the lives of troubled but smart inner-city students. In this scene, while LouAnne is in front of her class teaching, the students are upset with her because they felt she "ratted" on three students for fighting. LouAnne asks them if they want to discuss the issue. ...

In his spiritual memoir A Stranger in the House of God, author and Moody Bible Institute professor John Koessler tells the story of his younger brother George. Since childhood, George's life consisted of heartache after heartache: because of a collapsed lung shortly after birth, he struggled with a learning disability that made him the butt of far too many jokes—even from his own family; his ...

John W. Fountain is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was formerly a national correspondent for The New York Times. This is his testimony in the NPR series, "This I Believe":

I believe in God. Not that cosmic, intangible spirit-in-the-sky that Mama told me as a little boy "always was and always will be." But the God who embraced me when Daddy disappeared ...

The Secret Santa has been revealed—it's Larry Stewart, 58, a successful businessman from Lee's Summit, Missouri. Prior to the Christmas season of 2006, Stewart announced that he is the Secret Santa who has been anonymously doling out $100 bills to the needy every Christmas for the past 26 years.

Stewart says he decided to go public after it became apparent that a tabloid newspaper was going to ...

In 1963, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book entitled Cat's Cradle in which the narrator and main character, John, sought to write a book about the day the world ended. Vonnegut was prompted to do so by the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima. His fictional story deals with the technological ability of the human race combined with its stupidity.

Within the story, in the process of his research and travels, John comes ...

Scientist and skeptic Richard Dawkins, in his book River Out of Eden, explains: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

Skeptic Magazine interviewed Dawkins and asked if his world view was the same as Shakespeare's Macbeth, that life is "a tale told by an idiot, ...

In Flight of the Phoenix, Frank Towns (Dennis Quaid) is a pilot whose job is to ferry an oil crew out of a remote location in Mongolia. The plane crashes during a brutal sandstorm hundreds of miles off its flight path. Two passengers die in the crash, the radio is destroyed, and the plane ends up in pieces. With a limited supply of food and water, the situation seems hopeless for the stranded travelers. ...